The Me I Was With You

"It takes faith to coax a plant/from root to bloom" and so too, Tramontano has coaxed poems from experience of the Holocaust, from betrayal and chipped bone china, and a mother's failing memory. Here are poems of deep human feeling as told through the "luminous particulars," as Jane Kenyon would say: wisteria and white-capped waves and the furniture left when the family house must be sold.

-Holly Wren Spaulding, Familiars

In The Me I Was With You, Jan Tramontano tenderly explores the precariousness of human life. She does not flinch from loss carried in our bodies, in our small touches. For a lost love, she writes, I feel you in my fingertips. Fully accepting the pain of loss, she concludes a blanket of gloom falls/on ground frozen brown/but strivings of life still thrive. These haunting poems mark life's passage and remind us of what it truly means to be alive.

-Cecele Allen Kraus, Tuscaloosa Bypass, Elevation of the Mundane

With a sharp eye for the telling detail, Jan Tramontano's poetry provides an intimate, unsparing picture of life in all its deeply felt, intricately layered and compellingly told. Jan Tramontano is the real thing. This a book you will return to again and again.

-Howard J Kogan, A Chill in the Air, Indian Summer